This one is super exciting to me. I'm really short on time, though, so I'll have to make my notes brief. Here are my three favorite things about this release:

1. The left sidebar has new icons that are a lot easier to visually parse in terms of remember which thing does what. Even I would get confused from time to time about the red swoosh versus the blue swoosh and which was which. Now it's way more obvious what is what thanks to using characters and graphics from Nick's comic.

Apologies to those of you who will have to re-learn the sidebar icons and thus feel disoriented for a short while. But I fall into that same group with you, and after just a day I'm feeling perfectly acclimated to the new icons, to be honest. Hope you'll like them also!

2. Random maps! As in, the starting state of each of the existing map types is now random. :) I'm super surprised about how big of a difference this makes to the feel of the early game.

3. A new path to victory! Armageddon lets you basically end the game early, but in a fiery ball of death. Well, okay, not fiery: in a bandit-laden ball of death. This is a really exciting thing because previously the only path to victory was surviving to the very last turn. But once you've met your victory conditions, if you are in a very strong position that is not an interesting proposition. So this lets you test just how strong your position is, heh, and either end victoriously early or go out in a blaze of glory. Or, you know... buried under a hundred bandits.

There's other good stuff here, too.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: Naturally, because it's Father's Day weekend, I introduced a major bug into the game right before the weekend. ;) Fixed now in 1.011, so the zombie units and tokens are no more.

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.

« Last Edit: June 15, 2013, 08:27:27 PM by x4000 »

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Having taken a quick peek though, I'm really sorry to be negative here, but though the icons are clearer, they also clash with the style of the game. It's a really strong clash, in fact, one that's jarring and makes the game look much more amateurish. The art in the game is beautiful IMO, with the buildings resembling the detailed sprites from the Settlers series and the units having a classical look of their own. The cartoon style is very different and obtrusive. I would recommend that you have your artist go over the cartoons and remake them in her style to be consistent with the rest of the game.

Just to weigh in on 1010, personally i think it is way cool!! I love the new menu icons, makes things very clear and nice, the new units for the bandits and the new way that score works, very nice! THanks for a really nice update.

from X4000 - "Fixed an issue where if mythological creatures were extinct and it was the age of gods, then all sorts of craziness would happen.

Specifically: bandits would not properly appear on their keeps; the "look at new unit" view would not go to the keeps; red/blue units would stack on one another inappropriately; red/blue units would attack tiles with "nothing" on them, or attack a building far after it was dead. Also human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria! "

Yeah, I'd suggest getting more fitting icons as well. I gave them a look like, 'what the heck' and... yeah, the land tiles one in particular stands out as really odd. I do like the 'other buildings' being just a simple house. Maybe military buildings can be like, just a pair of crossed swords. Something similar to that. Simple and easy to identify. Although, I assume you actually knew that already.The random map generation is really excellent, by the way. Loving the look of it. If you do decide to allow access to premade maps (with the auto-adding-on-ness) you might couple that with some kind of map designing tool. That would be excellent. Ooh! Or maybe you wouldn't even need that. You could allow players to load sandbox games as 'real games' from turn 1 and play as normal... and then there'd be this really awesome scenario editor. Or, of course, you could just design a simpler map around two town centers in 'sandbox' to just create a regular old map!

okay, I get too excited over design tools. That's not really the important thing to focus on at the moment.

As far as I am concerned go over the new icons to adjust their stlye if you must but *please* do not change their (cartoony) motives.I love them! For me they are another welcome tie to Nick's awesome comic!

I think the new icons are vastly superior to those we had before and I can't really see a *significant* clash in style here If I am honest. Sure, they are a bit more cartoony, but hey - they're awesome.

If I am alone with this opinion and you want to / have to get rid of them can you at least provide some way to pull them back in (either by use of a config setting or by having to manually put them into some folder etc.)? I would jump through a couple of hoops to keep them!

Minotaur hugging Cerberus and the Greek and Norse guy staring each other down - *shakes head* simply too cool to loose it ...